Harispe, as it turned out, had left Teruel on the 15th, in obedience to his orders, by the post-road to Segorbe and the coast. But hearing on the second day that a large Valencian force was holding the defile of Las Barracas, where the road crosses the watershed, he had turned off by a bad side-path to Ruvielos in the upper valley of the Mijares, in the hope of joining his chief without being forced to storm a difficult position. Blake, as a matter of fact, much alarmed at the approach of a flanking column on the Teruel side, and ignorant of its strength, had sent the division of Obispo and some other detachments to hold the pass. But no enemy came this way--Harispe had diverged down the course of the Villahermosa river, by a country road only practicable for a force without guns or wheeled transport, and got down by rapid marches to the coast-plain beyond Alcora, without having seen any enemy save some scattered guerrillero bands. He had thoroughly distracted Blake’s attention and had run no danger, because he took an unexpected and difficult route, in a direction quite different from that by which the Spaniards expected him to appear[12]. [12] Vacani says that the Teruel column was intended by Suchet as a mere demonstration, and was never intended to follow the high-road Teruel-Segorbe, but to take a cross-route over the hills, such as was actually used by it. But Suchet, in his _Mémoires_, makes no such statement (ii. p. 152), and speaks as if Harispe had taken the Ruvielos route on his own responsibility. The whole army was now concentrated near Villafanes on September 21, save the detachments left to block Peniscola and Oropesa, and the brigade of Ficatier, which, escorting the siege-train, had been left at Tortosa, to await orders for starting when there should be no enemy left in northern Valencia to molest it. The heavy guns were to come forward down the coast-road, first to breach the towers of Oropesa, and when the way past them was clear, to play their part, if necessary, in the more serious task of battering Saguntum.